Rifkin's Festival (2020)

Direction: Woody Allen
Country: USA / Spain / Italy

Wallace Shawn, who stunned in Louis Malle’s 1981 masterpiece My Dinner With Andre, stars in Woody Allen’s Rifkin’s Festival, a comedy where there are incantations and personal supplications to be found. By comparison with Allen's recent work, I must admit this one presents something more to pull it slightly above the average. But that doesn't mean it's free of clichéd situations. 

The story is set in the Spanish city of San Sebastian during its film festival, and follows Mort Rifkin (Shawn in his sixth collaboration with Allen), a failed writer and pleased film teacher who is ignored by his wife, Sue (Gina Gershon), as she obsesses with a pretentious, narcissistic French filmmaker (Louis Garrel). The lonely Mort is assaulted by weird dreams, a wide range of anxieties and imaginary conversations with family and people from his past. His inner fears take the expression of uncomfortable chest pains that, all of a sudden, go away after he sees Doctor Jo Rojas (Elena Anaya).

Allen paints both dreams and flashbacks in black-and-white as well as some fragmented recreations of European classics - his homage to Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, and Buñuel - which are artfully wrung into the plot. There can be little doubt that certain plot points don’t add up to a story that is very much Allen’s. Yet, he sort of gets away with this melting pot of contemporary and classic cinema that plays as inoffensive as warm-hearted.

Mulan (2020)

Direction: Niki Caro
Country: USA / Canada / Hong Kong

Since 2002, eclectic New Zealander writer/director Niki Caro has been struggling to reach the same level of accomplishment of Whale Rider, her sophomore feature film. After the passable dramas North Country (2005) and McFarland, USA (2015), and the expendable The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017), she returns with Mulan, a live-action adaptation of the 1998 animation feature of the same name by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook. For this Disney-production, Caro engages in a simplistic tale, a sweet candy confection filled with a feminist prowess that, despite well-intended, favors style over substance.

Mulan (Yifei Liu) is a fearless girl who, disguised as a male warrior, undertakes an incredible journey as she joins the imperial army to save her aging father (veteran Tzi Ma) from the burden of war and potential death. The film also welcomes acclaimed Chinese-born Singaporean actress Gong Li as the witch Xianniang, and action star Jet Li as the Emperor of China.

The dazzling physical battles, captured under the supervision of cinematographer Mandy Walker (Tracks; Hidden Figures), are insufficient to overcome the petty humor (the stinky smell joke about the heroine is repetitive) and faint romance. What should have been edgy and thrilling turned into a disappointing routine. If nothing else, Mulan looks gorgeous.

Tenet (2020)

Direction: Christopher Nolan
Country: USA

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet gets off to an intriguing start when a loyal CIA agent, merely referred as The Protagonist (John David Washington), is recruited by an obscure organization to save the world from the hands of an abominable Russian oligarch, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh). A war world with calamitous consequences is about to happen, and in order to accomplish his time-travel mission, our hero will count on Sator’s aesthete wife, Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), a hired handler, Neil (Robert Pattinson), and a fixer, Mahir (Himesh Patel).

The film, which took Nolan nearly two decades to develop and put together, has its thrilling moments but the plot is an intricate house of cards that proves too ambitious for its own good. The inverted time concept with occasional overlaps induces an intrinsic complexity that makes the story feel derivative and unexciting. Hence, the constant back and forth in time becomes fatiguing as the mission proceeds.

This is unmistakably Nolan in his love for highly layered tales and puzzling structures (remember Memento and Inception?), but this time he overstuffed the plot to the point of not making much sense out of it. Moreover, Ludwig Göransson’s (Black Panther; Creed) ominous score often feels intrusive while Washington's performance is not as sharp as in BlackKklansman.

We are told in the film that the word Tenet will open the right doors but also some wrong ones. Well, Nolan seemed to have open the wrong ones for this mediocre espionage sci-fi thriller.

The Witches (2020)

Direction: Robert Zemeckis
Country: USA

Robert Zemeckis, the director who gave us Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, fails to provide adequate entertainment with The Witches, a cinematic flop with serious issues imposing to any valid credentials in the categories of animated fantasy and horror comedy. Anne Hathaway as The Grand High Witch, and Octavia Spencer as a witch-sensitive grandma, star in a flabby adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1983 novel of the same name, which had been successfully tackled by Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now; Walkabout) in 1990.

The script was penned by Zemeckis, Kenya Harris and Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth; The Shape of Water), with the latter being also credited as a co-producer together with Alfonso Cuáron (Gravity; Roma). The narration is by Chris Rock. 

The promising beginning quickly morphed into a ridiculous fantasy - an authoritarian Hathaway floats and shouts annoyingly, witches evaporate in the air, kids are transformed into ludicrous mice… everything is so painfully boring. The competent photography by Don Burgess, who has been working intermittently with Zemeckis since Forrest Gump, is not enough to make us waste almost two hours of our time with this terrible mess. Zemeckis and his associates really overdid, losing the sense of focus. This isn’t a fun one to watch, and it’s not even weird enough to make me like it a little.

Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020)

Direction: Kim Yong-hoon
Country: South Korea

Beasts Clawing at Straws is a gritty neo-noir thriller that runs fast and twisted. In his first feature-length film, director Kim Yong-hoon adapted Keisuke Sone’s Japanese novel of the same name, depicting its relatively complex interconnections between characters with positive results.

The story, told in six chapters, revolves around a lost bag of money highly coveted by the indebted people that come across with it, including a former restaurant owner turned into bathhouse clerk (Bae Seong-woo), an insidious customs officer (Jung Woo-Sung) and his wild and merciless ex-girlfriend (Jeon Do-yeon ), a violent loan shark (Jung Man-sik) and the gut-eater assassin who works for him (Bae Jin-woong).

Brutal violence occurs but not in an exaggerated extent, and you can indulge in a trillion betrayals and scams, aspects explored in a way that are truly emblematic of the genre. Well-shot with apt camera angles and filled with energy, the film has no dull moments despite of its many dull characters.

Farewell Amor (2020)

Direction: Ekwa Msangi
Country: USA

Going back and forth in time, Farewell Amor tells the story of an Angolan family - husband Walter (Ntare Mwine), wife Esther (Zainab Jah) and teen daughter Sylvia (a notable debut by Jayme Lawson) - that reunites in Brooklyn, New York, after 17 years apart.

However, and despite the tranquil storytelling envisioned by the Tanzanian-American writer/director Ekwa Msangi, their relationships are far from placid. Walter, fled the Angolan civil war to pursue the American dream, whereas his wife moved to Tanzania with their baby daughter, waiting for things to get better. But the years have passed… Walter found solace and strength in another woman and a small supportive Angolan community, whereas Esther became not just a strict and lonely person but also a religious fanatic. Figuring how to adapt to the new culture, Sylvia dreams to be a dancer, an idea instantly discouraged by her mother but supported by her estranged father.

Gladly, this emotionally-driven immigrant song doesn’t feed on tears. Msangi turns her affectionate eyes to the center of the adversities while gently pushing the family into harmonious comfort, restoring hope. A fair dose of honesty and terrific performances by the three leads contributed to a sympathetic debut feature.

The Outpost (2020)

Direction: Rod Lurie
Country: USA

Rod Lurie’s factual war film, The Outpost, reconstructs the tormenting moments lived by 53 American soldiers under heavy Taliban fire while stationed at Combat Outpost Keating, located in a remote valley in eastern Afghanistan. The occurrence, known as the Battle of Kamdesh, took place in October 2009. The script by Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson - the duo behind The Fighter (2010) and Patriots Day (2016) - was based on the book The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor by CNN journalist Jake Tepper.

With no much time available to get inside the characters, everything develops quickly and forthright, yet the film never engages in pyrotechnic flourishes, preferring instead to dive in a raw realism that goes hand-in-glove with the bursts of tension. The responsive ensemble cast is at its best during the frenetic action scenes, but the film also emphasizes rather than examines the psychological disorders experienced by soldiers in distress. 

Being Lurie’s best film to date, The Outpost is an unsparing look at the frustrations of fighting against hundreds of invisible enemies armed to their teeth. Furthermore, it makes us ponder about how the massacre could have been easily avoided.

David Byrne's American Utopia (2020)

Direction: Spike Lee
Country: USA

American helmer Spike Lee captures a brilliantly staged rock concert put together by British-American singer and conceptualist genius David Byrne, the former leader of the rock band Talking Heads, for a Broadway show in which he and his band perform wireless.

The visuals are arresting and the music, hit after hit, delivers pivotal messages that include the necessity to vote, interpersonal connections, racial inclusion and immigration, climate change, connections of the brain, and many more. The film not only includes the Heads’ biggest hits - “Once in a Lifetime”, “This Must Be the Place” and “Road to Nowhere” (a memorable conclusion with Byrne leading his 11-piece group to circle around the audience) - but also some solo Byrne material and a powerful version of the protest song “Hell You Talmbout" by Janelle Monáe.

The camera work under Lee’s supervision is excellent, and you’ll feel enlivened by the vibrant energy of these quirky pop/rock songs arranged with tribal rhythms, funky chords, and powerful lyrics.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Direction: Spike Lee
Country: USA

With a hot topic but overhyped in its violent scenes, Da 5 Bloods was originally written by Danny Bilson and Paul de Meo in 2013. Director Spike Lee re-adapted the script together with Kevin Wilmott (following their successful collaboration in BlackKklansman) to fit the African-American reality, after Oliver Stone has given up the project in 2016.

The story follows four black veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who decide to return to Vietnam to retrieve a buried box with gold and locate the body of their former leader, Stormin’ Norman (the late Chadwick Boseman). 

Protracted and unpolished, this post-war treasure-hunt film is somewhat repetitive in some of the ideas, and it could have been even worse if it wasn’t for Lindo's strong performance. The director plays with flashbacks, real footage and photography to better center his subtexts and motivations, but outside of the moderately thrilling war sequences, there’s little to justify the film’s two-and-a-half hour runtime. This jungle trip, not deprived of challenges and problems itself, only intermittently sparks.

Pinocchio (2020)

Direction: Matteo Garrone
Country: Italy

Crammed with fantastic creatures and characters, Pinocchio has here its most eccentric version in the hand of Rome-born director Matteo Garrone, whose quirky style is on full display. The endless possibilities within the imaginative plot is synonym of an expansive creative mind already identified in films like Gomorrah (2008), Reality (2012), and Dogman (2018). Garrone co-wrote this darkly magical adventure with Massimo Ceccherini, taking advantage of the acting skills of actors Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful; Down By Law) and the young Federico Ielapi, in his first major role. By the way, as a curiosity, Benigni directed himself a poor version of Pinocchio in 2002, in which he stars as the title character.

After skipping school to attend a local puppet theater, Pinocchio (Ielapi) gets lost from his beloved father and creator, Gepetto (Benigni). While the latter sets foot in the world outside to search for his wooden child, Pinocchio gets tricked twice by the opportunistic and grotesquely famished Fox (Ceccherini) and Cat (Rocco Papaleo). He keeps involved in a series of perilous episodes while trying to learn his way back home. 

Besides offering life lessons and providing tremendous fun with unceremonious sophistication, Pinocchio also benefits from an incredible mise en scène, a well-versed costume design and an inviting photography.

Listen (2020)

Direction: Ana Rocha de Sousa
Country: Portugal / UK

Portuguese actress-turned-director Ana Rocha de Sousa left her mark in Venice with Listen, a debut feature brandishing a realistic style à-la Ken Loach. This is the drama of a struggling Portuguese couple living in the suburbs of London, Bela (Lucia Moniz) and Jota (Ruben Garcia), who does everything to keep their three children at their side and impede forced adoptions to proceed after they have been unjustly targeted by the inflexible British social services.

The film grabs our attention in its first third but gradually steps into precarious paths that leads to repetitive family gatherings and a zealous court scene that expressly seeks for emotional intensity. The screenplay, co-authored by Rocha and producers Aaron Brookner and Paula Alvarez Vaccaro, battles for consistency with an approximate number of hits and misses. Aiming for higher narrative stakes, the film rushes a few scenes and fades away nearly as fast for an undistinguished conclusion.

Love and Monsters (2020)

Direction: Michael Matthews
Country: USA

If you’re craving adventure/fantasy flicks, Love and Monsters can be a valid option. South African director Michael Matthews (Five Fingers for Marseilles) invites us to join his 24-year old hero, Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien), in a risky 80-mile enterprise to find his girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), who has been away from him for seven years due to a Monsterpocalypse.

Traversing monster-filled forests and unruly places, Joel finds the courage to leave his bunker and his colony and sets foot into the wilderness armed with a bow, arrows and his apocalypse diary. Along the way, he adopts a cool stray dog, is helped by a survival expert (Michael Rooker) and his young protégé (Ariana Greenblatt), and fights incredible beasts such as a giant toad, a giant centipede, a Queen Sand-Gobbler, and a monster crab. He also contacts with a dying robot from the advanced Mavis line in the most touching scene of the film.

More eye-catching than cerebral, this feel-good fantasy, conceived and co-written by Brian Duffiels, provides an amusing session. 

Rebecca (2020)

Direction: Ben Wheatley
Country: UK / USA

Working from a script by Jane Goldman, Joe Schrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, British director Ben Wheatley (Sightseers; A Field in England; High-Rise) doesn’t succeed in adapting Rebecca, the famous novel by Daphne du Maurier and immortalized as a motion picture by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940.

There’s an embarrassing lack of freshness in this remake that will hamper many viewers from being charmed, thrilled or even intrigued by this emotionally-bland, color version of the aforementioned literary work.

The splendorous decors and an adequate performance by Kristin Scott Thomas as the villainous housekeeper - in opposition to the unconvincing acting of Lily James and Armie Hammer as the newly married de Winters - are the best this romantic psychological thriller has to offer. The soundtrack revealed to be another setback together with an inadequate lightness in a storytelling that required more dramatic grandeur and emotional depth.

Kajillionaire (2020)

Direction: Miranda July
Country: USA

Kajillionaire is the first feature directed by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know; The Future) in nine years. Beautifully acted throughout, this is a strange, often taciturn trip to the peculiar world of a dysfunctional family.

Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger are Robert and Theresa Dyne, respectively, a couple of remorseless, incorrigible scammers that forcefully push their homeschooled, avid-for-love 26-year old daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), into their beyond-belief schemes. The family lives on the edge of survival but the parental exploitation suddenly comes to a halt when a complete stranger, Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), joins them for a critical heist.

In addition to the deep-rooted cunningness of the parents, which is sharply portrayed, there’s a tiresome self-pitying tone that would have worked better if transformed into sarcasm. Although I was mildly entertained with the subtle absurdity, laughs are infrequent and I struggled to connect completely. From my perspective, the film tried in vain to push the limits of its poker-faced way and failed in its most riotous moments. It doesn’t really get better as it advances but rather maintains the off-kilter procedures.

The Nest (2020)

Direction: Sean Durkin
Country: UK / Canada

The stake was high for Canadian writer/director Sean Durkin’s sophomore feature after such a fantastic debut with the indie gem Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011. Although not disappointed with the slow-burning thriller The Nest, which walks a fine line to create enough character development and keeps us interested in its psychological web, I have to admit that this is far from any type of brilliancy. Still, the film delivers a few acute observations in its portrayal of the O’Haras, a family that, trying to adapt to a new life in London after moving from the US, creates a downward spiral into disharmony.

Jude Law and Carrie Coon carry their performances with strength, forging a male-female relationship that seems condemned to collapse. He says: “you’re embarrassing”, she responds “you’re exhausting”. Can love beat vanity and power?

Isolation, estrangement, dishonesty and deception, all shape a family-decaying story mounted with stark realism. It’s a shame that Durkin opted for the easiest conclusion, but the film remains valid. Both the pop/rock soundtrack and the film score are great.

On The Rocks (2020)

Direction: Sofia Coppola
Country: USA

Sofia Coppola returns with a too-sweet-and-less-punchy story about a Manhattan-based writer and mother of two (Rashida Jones), who gets stuck to the idea that her hardworking husband (Marlon Wayans) is cheating on her with his attractive assistant (Jessica Henwick). Desperate, she opens up with her womanizer father (the fabulous Bill Murray is equal to himself), who becomes the only reason why you should consider to give a chance to this trivial dramedy. 

Ms. Coppola had better days, and if powerful dramas such as The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003) and The Beguiled (2017) were expressions of her filmmaking prowess, then On The Rocks disappoints, even if with some charm.

Delivered with a bourgeois, Woody Allen-esque vibe, the film is somewhat formulaic and undistinguished, with Murray’s amusing scenes being a poor trade-off for the inert course of events. With the father playing the child and the daughter playing the adult, the film fell short of my expectations in the end.

Vampires vs. The Bronx

Direction: Oz Rodriguez
Country: USA

More feel-good than squeamish, Vampires vs. The Bronx connects with the viewers through a trio of charismatic young characters. In fact, this small bloodsucking spin provides a few laughs but it’s scarce in tension, telling the story of three brave teenage friends who join forces to save their Bronx neighborhood from a real-estate machination led by merciless vampires.

The non-elaborate scenarios and relaxed posture generate a likable indie flavor but the film would have drawn more attention if the director Oz Rodriguez, who co-wrote it with Blaise Hemingway, had put a fresh perspective on the pop, urban vampirism. All the same, up-to-date topics such as gentrification, mischaracterization of emblematical neighborhoods and a moving sense of community are present. Limited yet watchable horror-comedy.

Time (2020)

Direction: Garrett Bradley
Country: USA

Shot in black-and-white for artistic purposes and using both original footage and home videos recorded over 18 years, Garrett Bradley’s Time is a short documentary film turned feature that succeeds as an example of a tenacious years-long fight against the American justice system.

This is the story of Sibil Fox Richardson, a committed mother of six and modern-day abolitionist, who spent more than 20 years fighting for the release of her husband, Robert, from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, after both had attempted to rob a bank in a desperate phase of their youth. While she served three and a half years, he was sentenced to 60, an injustice that, as the film claims, is the story of many other in America.

Although delivered with fortitude, steadfastness and passion, the film fails to maintain the promptitude in showing a troubled, flawed legal system. However, the numerous frustrations in the process as well as the trepidation and matureness that gradually increase as the years sped forward are definitely bonus points. A grievous love story with a light at the end of the tunnel.

His House (2020)

Direction: Remi Weekes
Country: UK

Intelligent in the way it combines refugee drama, cultural clash, loss and supernatural curse, His House is an atmospheric, unhinged horror movie with some minor flaws and major revelations in the plot.

Remi Weekes deserves credit in his strong feature debut, whose story, marked by torment and punishment, counts on taut, grippingly intense performances by Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosako. They play a South Sudan-couple who, after fleeing from their war-ravaged country in a small boat, are given asylum by the English government. However, besides dealing with deep grief due to the loss of their young daughter, they experience horrifying paranormal activity in their new house, located in a sinister suburban town.

Quite a few startles may catch you off-guard, but I found the isolation and emotional detachment to be more disturbing than the horror scenes. Hence, social commentary goes hand-in-glove with spectral abomination here.

The Devil All The Time (2020)

Direction: Antonio Campos
Country: USA

American director Antonio Campos has a penchant for dark thrillers, usually packing them with mystery, violence and emotional burden (Afterschool; Simon Killer). However, his new outing, The Devil All the Time, is not as crafted as the previous works, failing to live up to its potential as it never goes deep enough in the darkness of the chained plot threads.

This rural Southern tale, based on the novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock (the film’s narrator) and co-written by Campos and his brother Paulo, is presented with bluntly dried tones and little imagination.

It’s true that the storytelling is never muddled, but it’s too cold, bleak and tedious in its cinematic vistas. In the end, what stays with us is a repulsion for nearly every character and that weird sensation that there’s no message besides the evil omens.